Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
I don’t think you need to have had malaria to be profoundly moved by John Stanmeyer’s photographs for National Geographic ((Via BoingBoing)), though no doubt it helps. The New Agriculturist gathered some thoughts on the link between malaria and agriculture some years back. I picked up my dose here:
But I didn’t have to cope with it while also trying to grow enough food for my children. And talking of pictures on watery themes, check out these from the BBC on a Nigerian (cat)fishing festival.
I’m having a little trouble getting my head round this one. The “Republic of China on Taiwan” funded a successful project to teach Swazi farmers how to grow sorghum in areas with little rainfall. You might have thought that at least a few local farmers would have known how to grow this staple, but apparently all had been forgotten in the rush to cotton and maize. The Swazi Minister of Agriculture also said that education assisted the move away from sorghum:
Sorghum needed someone in the fields to chase away birds and because most children now go to school, maize then became popular.
The farmers who took part in the project were happy enough with the result. I just hope they don’t keep their children away from school to work as scarecrows.
Somewhat related to Jeremy’s post just below, there’s an article in the New York Times about young Americans going back to the farm. Or rather, going to the farm for the first time: we’re talking Upper East Siders clambering onto tractors. Would be interesting to see whether the percentage of organic farmers among them turns out to be above the average, and whether they will tend to eschew biofuels and favour weird niche crops, heirloom varieties, and agricultural biodiversity in general. Via Metafilter.
You may remember a post a few days ago on how barley is being replaced by sorghum for commercial beer-brewing in West Africa. Coincidentally, Timbuktu Chronicles pointed me to a 2004 paper which evaluated different local replacements for hops. Sorghum-and-cola beer, anyone? Anyone?
This just in from our friend and occasional contributor Danny Hunter out and about in Dublin admiring the agricultural biodiversity on show in a local market.
I walked one minute up the road to the Smithfield Horse Market and was surprised at how big a concern it was. There were horses, ponies and donkeys of all sorts. It was chaotic and pretty much unmanaged. Largely run by and catering for the Traveller community. At one stage there was a bare knuckle fist fight between two brothers apparently. If you missed that you could always go to the van selling videos which had a wide range of DVDs of all sorts of family members, friends and foes slugging it out (among the many road races the Travellers organise in various places). Kids as young as 12 years old were buying and selling! While it is always lovely to be around horses and get some nice shots it all seemed a bit brutal and sad. I liked the scene of the guy with crash helmet and shetland pony walking through the market. After a few hours of sweet fresh horse dung I set off on the Luas for the fresh lungs of Bray and did the 10km coast walk to Greystones.
